Thanks to Ken Warner, New Mexico has Multisystemic Therapy statewide
In 2000 when Ken Warner and his colleagues at the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, Children’s Behavioral Health Bureau (CBHB) attended a presentation on Multisystemic Therapy (MST) in Albuquerque, he had no idea he would go on to champion the evidence-based program statewide.
At the time, he was just doing his job. As chief of the CBHB, it wasn’t unusual for him to be involved with new initiatives in the hopes of expanding services to youth and families in New Mexico. However, after the presentation, it didn’t take long for him to decide he wanted to bring MST to his state. What took substantially longer was actually getting it there.
Getting the right people with the right goals
Warner decided to gather a team of key people including himself and several others from the Children Youth and Families Department, the Medicaid office and representatives from managed-care organizations (MCOs) to discuss whether it was feasible to bring MST services to New Mexico. As Warner explains, “Everybody agreed it was a worthy goal.” Though the work started immediately, it took nearly two years from the time the group met to actually implement services.
After about a year of negotiation with MCOs, MST gained some traction. The second year was spent working out a slew of technical issues that cropped up around providing MST in the Medicaid system. Technical difficulties aside, Warner and his team were ultimately successful in bringing MST to the Land of Enchantment. So successful, in fact, that at one point the state was pushing 20 teams. To put that in perspective, the average number of teams per state right now is seven. According to a cost analysis done by New Mexico’s Juvenile Justice Services System (JJS), MST saved taxpayers more than $54 million and saved crime victims almost $105 million through reductions in adjudicated petitions. This represents a benefit of $65,754 per youth.
Successful expansion despite roadblocks
How did New Mexico manage to expand so successfully despite facing significant setbacks? Well, Warner’s going to touch on that in his presentation at the MST pre-conference at Blueprints on April 11. One way was using a project team for MST in which providers, MCOs, and state decision-makers troubleshot problems. Another way was through, as Warner put it, “historical luck.” About the time that he and his team were tossing around the idea of MST, Bruce King was elected governor. Due to his ambitious agenda that focused on children, he happened to be the “right guy at the right time” to help push MST forward.
One of Warner’s biggest takeaways from his experience of bringing MST to New Mexico is “to keep your eyes open to people who...can champion things.” In New Mexico, key people in different systems were willing to join to make MST a reality. On April 11, Warner will be talking more about his role in championing this system change, as well as the stumbling blocks he hit along the way.
